‘It can’t have been easy to come here,’ Dorothy said. ‘Would you like a drink?’

She waved the Highland Park in the air. Jenny wished her mum wasn’t so calm. It was irrational, but Jenny wanted to hold a grudge against someone, and Craig was in Saughton Prison, so Fiona would do.

Fiona nodded and entered like a deer into a clearing. Jenny imagined her in rifle crosshairs.

‘How’s Sophia?’ Hannah said.

Fiona scratched at her neck. ‘OK. She doesn’t understand, misses her dad.’

That made Jenny think, the ripples in all their lives.

Dorothy handed Fiona a whisky and she took a gulp. Jenny saw bags under her eyes, a nervous twitch in the corner of her mouth. She was thinner than Jenny had seen her looking on social media.

Fiona looked at the whiteboards, scribbles and scrawls, deaths to be negotiated, mysteries to be solved. She took another drink, stalling.

‘How are you all?’

‘The wounds have healed,’ Jenny said. Her hand went to her scarred stomach, touched the skin underneath her T-shirt.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ Fiona said.

‘Why are you here?’ Jenny said.

‘Jenny,’ Dorothy said.

It took Jenny back to being a kid, the reprimand in her mum’s voice, a shiver of shame up her neck.

‘This isn’t easy for anyone,’ Fiona said. ‘He refuses to sign the divorce papers, he’s still my fucking husband, think about that.’

Jenny thought about it. They both had daughters by the same bastard, they should be sisters-in-arms. But it wasn’t that easy.

Fiona took a drink. ‘I wanted to tell you in person. He’s changed his plea. From guilty to not guilty on the grounds of diminished responsibility.’

Hannah’s grip on the worktop tightened, she rocked back and forth. ‘Are you serious?’

‘He’s claiming he was crazy?’ Jenny said.

Fiona shook her head. ‘I couldn’t believe it when the solicitor told me.’

Hannah pushed herself away from the worktop and balled her hands.

‘But he admitted it,’ she said. ‘He admitted it all to the police.’

Fiona shrugged. ‘Says he wasn’t in his right mind. He’s pushing for a quick trial now too.’

Jenny couldn’t get her head around it. ‘After all this time? What’s he playing at?’

Dorothy had been silent through all this. ‘He can’t think he has a case.’

Fiona swallowed hard. ‘It’s not about that.’

‘Then what?’ Hannah said.

Fiona looked around the women. ‘He wants to see us in court. The solicitor thinks he’ll call us all as witnesses.’

‘But we’ll testify against him,’ Jenny said. ‘He must know that.’

Fiona downed the remains of her whisky, shivered from the hit.

‘He doesn’t care,’ she said. ‘He wants to punish us.’

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Other titles by Doug Johnstone, available from Orenda Books

Fault Lines

Breakers

The Big Chill

The Great Silence